Better
by follow9
Summary: Some coping techniques are better than others.


Paladin Danse, he says, and the name is the clunkiest she's ever heard. She's too embarrassed to ask if he's serious and it's only later, when the police station no longer reeks of ferals and ozone, that she learns that Paladin isn't a name at all. A rank, a title he wears proudly. This Brotherhood of Steel sounds organized and formidable and she hesitates when he asks if she'll join.

The spotlight illuminating the ArcJet sign spills over, dimly lighting her hands as she glances down at them. They pulse, jittery with withdrawal and adrenaline. She looks up and doesn't have to wonder if he's noticed. He's watching the spasms, wary.

When his eyes meet hers, they're reserved, narrowed slightly as he cements whatever judgements he's made. But he doesn't rescind his offer.

He's just a stranger, she tells herself, so it doesn't matter what he thinks. It doesn't matter if he looks at her like he's disappointed. _Fuck him._He doesn't know her well enough to expect better, doesn't know the hell she's been put through for the last week. The vault was cold but this world is colder. If she wants to intoxicate herself, that's her prerogative.

He waits for an answer. If she says yes, she'll have those shrewd eyes following her everywhere. He doesn't trust her, she knows, can see it in the way his body is only half turned towards her. But if she doesn't, she'll have to find her own food and she just doesn't have the stomach to carve her next meal from a mutated animal carcass.

So, she nods. "Okay."

It's not enthusiastic enough for this _Paladin_ _Danse_ and he only grunts in reply. She thinks that's the end of the conversation but suddenly he's thrusting one "Righteous Authority" towards her with a pained look etched on his face. He makes sure she knows it's nothing sentimental. Just payment. It's all he has to offer for her assistance. She slings it over her back and the walk to the police station is tense and quiet.

If Danse is skeptical about her place among them, Rhys is downright hostile. He makes no secret of his distaste for her and his paladin intervenes when his remarks cut too deep. The way Rhys recoils at the command in Danse's voice gives away how much his opinion means to those under his command. He's a leader to his bones and when he turns to her and asks for honesty and respect, she swallows hard.

She keeps to herself, tucked away in a side room on a bedroll and stays put until she's sure Rhys is snoring. When she breaks out in sweats, she kicks off her blanket and stares at the ceiling, resolved to break her habit if it doesn't break her first.

But her nightmare does her in.

Sleep only ever pulls her in to show her Nate, bloody and dead. Shaun won't stop crying from some invisible hideaway and even when she bolts upright, alert and shivering, she can still hear his phantom wails.

Withdrawal and trauma threaten to suffocate her. They sit heavy on her chest and she heaves, desperate for air. She stands on weak legs and makes for the roof only to barrel straight into Danse.

Out of his metal encasing, he still towers over her. She keeps her head down to avoid his scrutiny, save herself a lecture, but his hand on her shoulder burns her and she can't run.

"Initiate."

She stumbles over her words, maneuvers past him with the excuse of fresh air and she takes the stairs two at a time. The Commonwealth is humid, only slightly more breathable than inside the police station, but at least she doesn't feel boxed in with the city sprawling around her.

His footsteps are slow and light behind her, so different from the metallic heaviness she's come to associate with him. She's a strung out mess and she's down to a single syringe in her bag, if it hasn't been confiscated already. There's nothing to do but ride out the nausea and she has half a mind to turn and tell him she doesn't need an audience but it's ridiculously hard to look into his brown eyes and see what he thinks of her.

He stops beside her, gaze forward, sparing her. "Which chems?"

She draws in a breath and clenches every muscle, willing them to calm. "Psycho. Mostly."

He responds only in the form of a sigh and _damn him._

"You know, you could've just let me go," she spits. "You should've, if you're really that upset about this."

At her tone, he turns toward her and his eyes raking over her make her breath catch. She doesn't know why but she wants to be _good enough_and she has a sinking feeling she doesn't meet his standards.

"You _knew_. You knew at ArcJet and then you came back and you told _fucking Rhys_-"

His deep voice cuts through her tirade. "I didn't tell Rhys."

"Oh, no?" She raises her voice, more confused now than angry because he's thrown her off but the sharp edge is there all the same. "Then why does he give me the cold shoulder? Or is that just a standard Brotherhood welcome?"

"Initiate," he growls in warning.

"I think this was a mistake."

She turns to leave but he throws an arm out in front of her. She's irate until she finds his eyes, full of fiery conviction, and he speaks to her for the first time like he cares whether she lives or dies.

"You're right. I saw the signs at ArcJet. But I offered you a place in our ranks, regardless." He steps closer and her icy exterior cracks just slightly at the proximity. "You show a lot of promise. With the proper guidance, I think you have the potential of becoming one of the best."

She doesn't know if she believes that. She doesn't know if _he_believes that. But she knows that every night for the next week, he sleeps beside her just to be there when she's inevitably racked by visions of Shaun so she doesn't find solace in chemical cocktails.

But then, she relapses.

In the solitude of the garage, she decides that she's held out for too long. She needs release like food and water and she's tired of snapping at Haylen over trivial things. The needle in her vein is slavery but it feels warm for the moment.

When it's emptied, it's ripped from her hands and through the hazy high, she sees her despondent paladin. Nothing could drain her more quickly of the euphoria of liquid hope.

He's livid and impossibly sad because, she realizes, he blames himself. It rips her to shreds, more poisonous than the drugs. She explains for the first time, tells him about nukes and Shaun and doesn't stop talking until she sees that he understands. He does, he says, and he's sorry. And it's for her own good that he burns every chem in her possession that night, not coming inside until they're ash and smoke.

He sits by her as she falls asleep, is there when she wakes up, frantic, all steady hands and solid warmth. He's the same for her two weeks later, when the Prydwen arrives and she overdoses at the airport. She comes to in the med bay to blinding light and blurry figures huddled over her.

And one of them, of course, is her paladin.

He looks relieved enough to cry, though she's never seen him shed a tear. He mumbles "thank God" and drops into the chair beside her cot, head in his hands, to finally rest. He spends his nights in that same hard-backed chair until she's cleared again for duty and then he is inseparable from her because he doesn't want to be missing when she needs someone.

And she does, often.

Because panic seizes her regularly and he's been with her long enough to be the only person in that entire goddamned ship with any clue how to ground her. He knows better than to talk or do anything but count for her until her inhales are three seconds long and her shoulders relax. He knows the ways to hold her that don't feel like a cryopod constricting her movement, that are as close to embraces as Danse can come. He knows how, in the aftermath of her attacks, she doesn't like to look at him too closely and doesn't want to be debriefed. When they're alone, in the field or otherwise, he lets her fall asleep against him with her fingers tangled in his holotags just for something tangible to hold. She's embarrassed of the way she needs him but he allows it even when he pushes others away. The more he knows her, the more distant the paladin of Reconaissance Squad Gladius becomes; the one who'd surveyed her with suspicion at Cambridge and grudgingly called her Brotherhood. The way he looks at her evolves from vigilant mistrust to frustration to empathy and she doesn't feel as much the burdensome junkie when she sees her reflection in his eyes.

She's determined that he live to see his investment pay off. He pours so much of himself into her and he deserves to see rosy cheeks and smiles so big, they _hurt_. That woman is far away but never closer than when she sets up camp on some unmapped patch of land, watching Danse kindle a fire and attempt to cook her something.

"You're a blowtorch, Danse."

He grins at her across the flames. "It's only unappealing if you compare it to your pre-war restaurants."

"You have the precision of a flamer," she shakes her head and sighs, amused as she watches the edges of the meat blacken, "and I'm not eating whatever you incinerate for me tonight."

He pulls their singed dinner from the fire, frowning. The look on his face is so comically vexed that she falls into hysterics and she knows he's struggling to remain composed himself by the flex of his diaphragm.

Like no one else. There's no stand-in for her commanding officer, no replica, not before the war or after.

Danse is reliability and unwavering calm. _Hers_. And for once, she thinks, the wasteland is beautiful.


End file.
